Oops. I bought a ton of blackworms & am not really sure where to keep 'em!

[JustinKScott]

I have a few worm keepers.. But not enough. What do you guys do for your blackworms?


Jks
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60g waterfall tank
80g high tech planted (2.7w/g t5ho, pressured co2, EI ferts)
55g bare-bottom Discus growth tank w/ 7 juvies
55G bare-bottom tank w/ 7" adult Discus
Angelfish breeder

[Altum Nut]

Either try to sell some off locally or put in a large container and keep changing lots of water everyday.
I'm sure someone here on SD is near you and is willing to take some off your hands.

...Ralph

[Second Hand Pat]

I use three worm keepers for a pound. How much did you get? Could you overload the keepers and raise several times a day??

[JustinKScott]

I have 3 keepers & a pound and a half. Can I just over load for a couple days?


Jks
---------
60g waterfall tank
80g high tech planted (2.7w/g t5ho, pressured co2, EI ferts)
55g bare-bottom Discus growth tank w/ 7 juvies
55G bare-bottom tank w/ 7" adult Discus
Angelfish breeder

[Second Hand Pat]

I did that with a pound and a quarter. I overloaded the keepers and rinse at least twice a day. Also feed evenly out of each keeper to lower the worm bio-load in each one. Also I rinse before feeding.
hth,
Pat

[Darrell Ward]

If you have a spare tank, dump em in, and add a filter with carbon. Feed em with a little crushed fish food. Hands down the best way to keep them fresh and alive for months and months. 100 times better than trying to keep them in the fridge. This is the way I keep mine, because I usually buy a couple pounds at a time.

[MightyEvil]

A little off topic, but can we see someone feed these black worms to the discus? Kinda curious to see how they take them and how well they take them...

[zimmjeff]

they go crazy for them. they stuff themselfs. the good part no waste in the tank.

[Skip]

A little off topic, but can we see someone feed these black worms to the discus? Kinda curious to see how they take them and how well they take them...

just think of Sharks going after a surf..

[jimmyjoe]

My over loads of blackworms, I have 5 keepers and I order a pound and a half. Before my 5th keeper I put the extra in a 5 gallon bucket with just enough water to keep them wet and throw them in my cool garage, till I use them up. Jim in Ohio

[Second Hand Pat]

If you have a spare tank, dump em in, and add a filter with carbon. Feed em with a little crushed fish food. Hands down the best way to keep them fresh and alive for months and months. 100 times better than trying to keep them in the fridge. This is the way I keep mine, because I usually buy a couple pounds at a time.

Darrell, how big of a tank?

[Darrell Ward]

It really doesn't matter that much, as long as they are not crowded. I use a 27 gal. plastic container to house the worms, sitting on top of a 55 gal. used as a sump, only because I had it lying around. But you could use a 20 gal. tank with a sponge filter, with a bag of carbon lying on the bottom, or anything that would hold water. When you first put a big load of worms in, the water will cloud up really bad and smell overnight. (hence the need for carbon) After a couple of days of daily 100% water changes, the mess goes away, and you can go a week or so between water changes with no mess or smell. You can keep the worms alive indefinitely this way. Below is 2 full pounds of worms in the 27 gal. container. You could easily keep 3 more pounds in it.

[x2h]

what kind of fish food do you feed them? I used to feed pellets and they left behind some solid stuff. I am wondering if I could toss in ripped shrimps.

and, is the population actually increasing?

[Darrell Ward]

I really don't know what these things are supposed to eat, but I've been feeding them crushed Hikari Massavore pellets, and they crawl all over them. I guess any kind of fish food that could be crushed very fine would work. I don't really notice great population increases, because I feed fish from the lot every day.

[x2h]

ic. i will try crushed food then. hope that will keep them not hungry at least.

[ericatdallas]

and, is the population actually increasing?

In some of the other websites, increasing the temperature helps increase the population.

From the sound of it all, it really does seem more trouble than it's worth to raise your own. Not sure the cost or trouble makes sense yet, but there was one guy that swears by growing your own.

I don't think the main issue is that when they're out in a giant outdoor pond (a representative environment) it's pretty easy for them to increase their numbers. Throw it in a controlled and contained environment and you add some additional effort that may counteract the value of doing it yourself.

I do know of a guy local to me that's doing it but from his description, it doesn't really sound like fun to do.